


Last Kiss

by HakeberHooligan



Series: Last Kiss 'Verse [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Car Accident, Established Relationship, Good Peter Hale, Inspired by Music, Last Kiss, M/M, Multi, Pearl Jam - Freeform, Please Don't Hate Me, Post-Canon, This has no redeeming qualities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 08:47:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20597987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HakeberHooligan/pseuds/HakeberHooligan
Summary: Peter and Chris are heading back to Beacon Hills after taking down a rogue Alpha. Stiles talks to them on the phone while they travel, and Peter hasn't been this content since before the fire. He's filled with bright possibilities of the future with the two men he loves most. He never imagined that the night would end with him kneeling beside Chris, covered in his blood, helplessly watching as he takes his last breaths.Based on the song Last Kiss, covered by Pearl Jam





	Last Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> First and foremost, I want to apologize for writing this. There's no happy ending, just three souls being violently torn in different directions.
> 
> Last Kiss was originally released by Wayne Cochran in 1961, but the Pearl Jam cover is the one that speaks to me. If you haven't heard it yet, give it a listen. I hope I did the song justice. 
> 
> That being said, heed the tags, take care of yourselves, and as always, thank you for reading 💕

Peter feels… he feels _ good. _Good, as in moral and just and decent. It’s been a long time since he’s truly felt like the kind of person his late mother would be proud of.

It’s just after midnight, and he and Chris are heading back to Beacon Hills, back to Stiles. Back to the most important person to both of them.

“You should have seen our Peter, Stiles,” Chris says to his phone, holding it between the two of them so they can both speak to their boy while Peter drives. He can’t help but preen at Chris’ praise. 

“Yeah, I _ should _ have,” Stiles grumbles from the receiver. He’s still sour about not being allowed to tag along. But he’s _ so _ close to graduating with his bachelors, and can’t afford to miss any classes. Besides, Chris and Peter had this one in the bag. They were a _ great _ duo. 

“Oh shush,” Peter coos towards the phone. “You can help us with the next Big Bad, sweetheart.”

“And you really didn’t…” Stiles lets the question hang in the air.

Peter glances at Chris and gets an affectionate smile in return.

“No, he didn’t.” Chris says softly.

He can hear the click of Stiles’ throat when he swallows thickly.

“I’m really proud of you, Peter,” he says in a rough voice.

Peter doesn’t quite know what to do with all of the approval. When they’d gotten wind of a rogue Alpha killing people a few hours north of Beacon Hills, everyone had just kind of assumed that Peter would take him down and absorb the Alpha spark. Hell, _ Peter _assumed it.

But as he stood over the dying Alpha, its status within his clutches, Peter found that he had no desire to take it. He’s been happier than he’d been since before the fire; Derek was a good Alpha, his hometown had seen peace for the last four years, and best of all, Chris and Stiles shared his bed every night. Did he really want to risk all of that, for simple power? The answer was a resounding _ no. _

So he’d stepped back.

“You do it,” he told Chris. Chris had gaped at him before schooling his features to a furrowed brow. In any other setting, it would have been comical.

“You don’t want…?”

“No. My life is perfect how it is.”

And Chris had gone misty-eyed at that, puffing his chest out with obvious pride and giving Peter a tight, emotional smile. Was it wrong how much Peter enjoyed making out with Chris over a body with its brains blown out across the ground?

He reaches over the center console and grasps Chris’ thigh, giving him an almost shy smile. Something about tonight makes everything feels like new, untouched territory.

“You’re making moon eyes at each other, aren’t you?” As always, Stiles cuts through the romantic moment with his obnoxious, adorable humor. Peter wouldn’t change him for the world.

“Peter’s the one with hearts for eyes,” Chris says distractedly, never breaking eye contact. In this moment, Peter can practically _ see _Chris’ affection radiating off of him.

“Tell Peter to keep his eyes on the damn road,” he hears John grouse for the other side of the line.

John had been hard to convince when they’d first started dating Stiles just after he’d turned twenty. He didn’t take too kindly to the man who tried to kill his son several times bedding him alongside another man twice his age. But he’d come around in the end, once he really _ saw _ how content Stiles was. Peter’s glad to say he’s found a friend in the man.

“You heard the Sheriff, boys,” Stiles chortles. “Eyes on the road. Arrive alive and all that jazz.”

Peter snorts, glancing at the road before looking back at Chris.

“How can I possibly keep my eyes on the road when I have a handsom-”

“DEER!” Chris yells, and Peter whips his head just in time to see a flash of tan streak across the headlights. He pulls his hand back to the wheel, swerves to the left just in time, and he can hear the tires squeal something awful against the pavement as he overcorrects. They fly to the right, straight off the road, and hurtle through the air. The headlights illuminate a massive oak, and there’s nothing Peter can do. His final thought before impact is a deep rage directed at himself for not keeping Chris safe.

\- - -

Peter groans, attempting to lift his head off the steering wheel. Everything hurts. It takes him a second to remember that he rammed his car into a tree. His thoughts are murky past that, and a crackling noise keeps distracting him. He’s in too much pain to _ think _though, and his body is slow to heal. When he feels a burning pain lick up his leg, his eyes snap open and he’s overcome with a primal terror that he hasn’t felt in years.

Fire.

He’s on _ fire. _

Surrounded by an inferno, fiery and all-consuming. He opens his mouth to scream, but all that comes out is a pathetic whine. In his mind he’s back home, watching his family burn around him. He can hear their screams and smell their flesh cooking. Can smell _ his _flesh.

He can’t die like this.

He immediately beta-shifts, and his healing speeds along. He’s in such a blind panic that he thrashes, trapped, until he realizes that his seatbelt is still on. The flames are up to his knees now, burning his pants and melting the soles of his shoes. Melting his _ skin. _He slashes madly at the belt, slicing both the strap holding him and the flesh underneath.

He pushes his door open and trips out of the car on damaged legs, roaring in fear and terror and pain. He drops to the grass and rolls until the flames are doused. Then he sits up in a daze, shifting back to human and trying to remember how he got here.

There was a deer. Before that…

_ Oh god. _

“Chris!” He screams, leaping up and stumbling back over to the car despite the pain in his still-healing body and the fire that’s consumed most of the car by this point. He _ left _Chris in there, too driven by his own fear to-

“Peter.” A small voice calling to him has him about-facing so fast that he nearly falls over. There, maybe fifteen feet in front of the vehicle, is Chris. Peter chokes back a sob and rushes over to him.

He’s a mess. Both of his legs are at severely _ wrong _angles, and his white shirt is being soaked through with blood, the stain slowly blooming across the previously pristine fabric. There’s a large gash on his forehead that sluggishly leaks down the side of his face.

Peter drops to his knees next to him, another sob escaping his lips. He vaguely hears Stiles yelling through the phone, inexplicably clutched in Chris’ left hand.

“Chris,” Peter whispers, taking in his battered form. The is _ bad, _ this is so _ bad… _

He lays a hand on his forehead, and focuses on draining his pain. There’s a slight tug, but nowhere near what he should be feeling.

“It’s okay, Peter.” Chris’ voice trembles slightly, but it shouldn’t be that steady. It _ shouldn’t. _ “It doesn’t hurt.”

And that’s just not _ right, _ but Peter knows it’s true. A werewolf can only drain the pain a person is _ feeling, _not any actual pain that they’re enduring. Draining pain from a child is usually more painful than an adult, because children feel everything so much more deeply. And for Chris to not be feeling anything…

“You’re in shock,” Peter says roughly. “It’s going to be okay.”

He tears open Chris’ shirt and sees a large cut on the side of his ribs. He applies pressure there with one hand, and puts the other over the gash on his forehead.

“...Dad called 9-1-1, Peter. They’re going to be there in ten minutes. Please, talk to me!” Stiles is babbling on the phone, crying out and close to hysterical. Peter looks at the phone resting in Chris’ slack hand. The screen is cracked, but it still works, showing the picture that Chris programmed in for Stiles’ number. Stiles’ face smiles brightly at him, and the smear of blood across the screen sullies it.

“Stiles.” Chris tries to raise his voice, and it sends him into a fit of coughing. Blood passes over his lips and dribbles unto his beard. Peter’s eyes sting with tears, and he blinks them away furiously.

“Stiles,” he tries again, and he sounds a little better this time. Peter leans over to take the phone from his limp hand and holds it close to Chris’ lips. Chris looks up at him and gives him a broken smile.

“Chris?”

“Stiles, I love you so much.”

“Don’t talk like that!” Stiles sounds scared and angry, and Peter’s heart is torn in two that he can’t be with his sweet boy now, holding him in his arms and whispering assurances into his ear. “Do something, Peter!”

Stiles’ plea feels like a punch to the guy. If only he had killed the Alpha, taken his spark… but no, he wanted to be better. _ Had _to be better.

And now his lover was going to die.

“I should have…” He can’t continue the sentence. “I’m so sorry, Chris.”

“Not your fault,” Chris gasps, and Peter draws what little pain he can. _ Not enough. _“You did the right thing, Peter. Don’t ever blame yourself.”

And Chris… he’s talking like he’s not going to survive this, and Peter can’t take it. He can’t lose Chris, won’t be able to survive it. He must have said as much out loud, because Chris smiles at him with bloodied teeth. 

“You will, Peter. You have Stiles, and you have Derek, and you have _ yourself _ to live for.”

“Chris, please,” Stiles cries from the phone.

“I’m going to give Peter a kiss for you, Stiles,” Chris says. How can he be so calm, so collected? Peter is listening to his heart stuttering, his breathing turn ragged, and yet he’s the coolest one out of the three of them. “You make sure he gives it to you, yeah?”

“O-okay,” Stiles hiccups.

Chris reaches up to touch Peter’s face with his right hand, the hand that’s still working, and brushes a trembling thumb over Peter’s bottom lip.

“For both of you,” Chris says, weakly pulling Peter towards him. Peter follows until he’s hunched over Chris, kissing him softly while salty tears and coppery blood mix on their lips.

“Love my wolf,” Chris murmurs against his lips.

“What can I do?” Peter asks in a wet voice.

“Hold me darlin’,” Chris replies with a weak smile. “just a little while.”

It’s as if a dam in Peter finally breaks. He thought he was feeling before, but that’s nothing compared to now. His heart is rending in two, bleeding metaphorically as Chris’ life literally bleeds out of him. He can feel himself slipping into insanity, and if the depths of his madness after the fire were a lake, this is an ocean. He’ll never claw his way back to the surface, he knows it. Not for himself or Derek, not even for Stiles, who he loves just as fiercely as he does Chris.

Because without Chris? All they are is broken. The three of them were inevitable, and without Chris, they're nothing.

He throws his head back and howls, pouring his despair and pain and impending loss into the haunting keen.

“Peter,” Chris says weakly.

_ “No,” _Peter growls, looking down at him with flashing eyes and warped features. Chris’ breathing hitches. “I refuse to lose you.”

He grabs Chris’ right wrist and brings it to his mouth, burying his fangs into the soft flesh until it gives, pulling Chris’ pain all the while. People close to death can be saved by the Bite, he’s seen Talia do it more than once. The body will fight tooth and nail to survive, and accepting lycanthropy is more likely to happen the closer it is to death.

He pours all of his will into the Bite. His love for Chris, all of his power as a wolf, tries to push his very _ soul _ through the connection. Because he’s _ good _now. He’s overcome the evil within himself, and he knows that it’ll fester beyond defeat without Chris.

“Peter, _ stop!” _ Chris weakly pulls his arm away, and Peter obliges. Logically, he knows that he can’t change Chris. He isn’t an Alpha. He’s just a stupid Beta who passed up that chance not an hour ago. But he wants _ so badly _ for Chris to take to the Bite, to change, to _ live. _

Chris starts seizing up, and Peter panics.

“Chris, stay with me!” He pleads. “I’m sorry!”

“What’s happening Peter?!” Stiles sounds close to a panic attack, and Peter can hear his heart hammering through the receiver. But he’s more focused on the other heartbeat, the one that’s faltering and slowing and sounding too sluggish.

“Love… ” Chris wheezes the words through his tremors. His tremors turn violent, and Peter desperately clutches him to his chest.

“CHRIS!” Peter roars, and Stiles is sobbing on the phone, and Peter can hear the fire crackling in the distance. The most deafening sound though, is the lack of sound. 

The lack of Chris’ heart fighting to pump blood.

His body stills, and his chest ceases to expand, slowly caving as his last breath is expelled.

“Peter!” Stiles gasps. “Talk to me!”

Peter is stunned. It’s like a switch is turned, and he feels nothing. As numb to his feelings as Chris was to his pain.

“I… I did this.”

“Peter, _ no, _don’t say that.” Stiles might be choking on his own words, but they still carry a sense of conviction.

Still, Peter knows it’s the truth. First, he’d passed up the chance to be an Alpha. The chance to _ protect _those he loved. Then he’d been too cocky in front of the wheel, acting like a green teenager.

He has nothing left. Chris is gone, and it’s only a matter of time before Stiles manifests resentment towards him, eventually turning into hate, then inevitable apathy. He’ll be nothing more than the man Stiles once loved, who murdered the man he’ll always love.

Despite never having achieved full-shift before, it feels like the most natural thing in the world to shed his skin like he’s shed his emotions. The form of the wolf calls to him like a siren, promising the absence of hurt, the absence of _ pain. _ Stiles is screaming on the phone now, begging him to _ talk, say anything, don’t leave, _but it’s background noise. The Peter he knows is already gone.

He stands on all fours, his paws wet with cooling blood that coats the grass around him. With one last look at the lifeless form beside him, he takes off into the nearby forest. 

He leaves behind fire, leaves behind heartbreak, and leaves behind a mourning boy whom he knows no more.


End file.
